The Morning Sanity Departed
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day four hundred and thirty-nine: It's not usually wise to leave her to her own devices for too long.


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 20th cycle. Now cycle 21! (I realized I didn't fix this line throughout the whole of cycle 20! *smacks forehead*)_

_A/N: Story being up so late is not my fault, it's the damn internet connection at my uni today, who was determined to annoy me! ;)_

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**"The Morning Sanity Departed"  
Sue & Brittany  
Sylvesters Series #17 (sequel to "Unsee, Unsee, Unsee!") **

She hadn't seen her mother since the day before at school. When she got home, there was no one to be found, as far as she could tell. There was the maid, but she had figured out a long time ago that she was nothing but a figment of her imagination, out to guilt trip her on her Spanish class failure... So she would work not to meet her eye, the better not to encourage the whole illusion.

Either way, she hadn't thought much of it. She'd had dinner, which had somehow appeared on her table, she'd done her homework, played with the cat... She'd just gone ahead and taken care of herself as she would when left on her own, and then she'd gone to bed... The next morning, there was still no sign of her mother. She thought it strange, but she went on as she had the previous night.

It took three days for things to gradually degenerate. It affected them all in Cheerios, of course. She sat there, listening to them all having their freak-outs... and she just wondered what happened to her mother.

She knew she was different when she was with them, at school, but it was just that... When they were home, she was her mother. She may not have been like those mothers on television, but she was hers, and she knew she loved her...

Now though, she was absent... She had actually realized, on that second evening, that she was in fact in her bedroom, in her bed, when she'd seen the 'maid' walk out of there with the laundry basket. The 'woman' had said something to her, but as usual Brittany did her best to ignore her. She didn't disappear, but she did walk away, muttering something in Spanish. Once she was gone, Brittany looked back to the bedroom door and slowly approached, pushed the door open.

There she was, her mother, lying in bed. She didn't move to see who it was, so Brittany approached. She sat and then laid down at her mother's side, face to face with her. She was looking right back at her, so now she had seen her, but she still said nothing. Brittany reached out and took her mother's hand in hers, and then... they just laid there in silence... Sylvester women, they could be uncomplicated like that... There was contact, and it was all they needed to know.

She'd ended up falling asleep there, for a while. She woke up because she was hungry and so, seeing her mother was still asleep herself, she'd gotten up to get food. Once again, there was a plate on her table, and she sat there by herself to eat. She didn't know what was going on with her mother, but she wasn't too worried still... Her mother was the strongest woman she knew, even more than that woman with the big arms at the place where she bought her shake powder... She'd snap out of it.

But in the meantime, there was still her, Brittany, and having to do things all on her own was maybe fine (if a little shaky) for a short period of time, but the longer it went on, the longer and harder things became for her.

Personal appearance alone suffered. It had happened so many times that she'd... put on her uniform backwards. If she didn't catch herself, her mother would take one look and tell her to go back to the mirror. And still after all this time as a Cheerio, she didn't know how to keep from getting that ponytail so tight that her skin felt pulled at the end of each hair. Her mother was an expert at fixing it despite the fact she didn't have hair long enough to get into a ponytail herself... a fact she'd be wise not to point out, or else she'd have to wait until she saw Santana at school to get it fixed. For the first three days, she got by... eventually, with some help and, to whatever degree she could manage, with some hypervigilence. But then the fourth day...

She hadn't slept well, plagued by one of her nightmares. On any other day, maybe she could have just bounced right back, but then the whole deal with her mother, who remained in her room and refused to say why... It only made her worry more. Everything she was usually just fine to shake off, now...

She went downstairs, and everything was still the same... She just looked into the room, and there she was again. She had continued going to her, lying with her... At least she'd gotten her to talk, but that was as far as she'd gotten her... It was no use; she couldn't get her to bounce back, try as she might.

So she'd gone back to her room, started to get dressed. She wasn't even paying attention at this point, just going through the motions. She put her uniform on backwards, and even four or five passes in front of the mirror didn't set a single alarm bell off. As it was, she was battling her hair, trying to get her own ponytail done, no help. But try after try it only came out too tight and down it came and up it went again... with each attempt it only got more frazzled, and finally a messy attempt looked like a work of art... it would do.

She left the house with the fantasy maid chasing after her, making gestures, and it only made her run faster. Somewhere in her increasingly demented mind, she yearned for her mother... her crazy, determined, caring-in-her-own-way mother... She had no idea how to make her better, which only made her feel worse. She knew she was strong, and she'd never seen anything really get to her this way... She needed her back and soon... It was a no sense life otherwise.

THE END

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**A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
****always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!**


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